A common sense consultant to Grammar and utilization is simply what its identify indicates: an easy, student-friendly grammar consultant. The text’s modular classes holiday down complicated grammatical thoughts with plain-language motives, convenient suggestions, and visible examples that express — instead of simply inform — scholars tips to realize, right, and discover ways to stay away from blunders in grammar. With 1000's of routines within the e-book and millions extra to be had on-line at no cost at workout important, scholars get abundant perform discovering and solving blunders of their writing. The textual content additionally comprises writing insurance and short documentation courses for MLA and APA, making it an invaluable reference for quite a few collage classes.

Decode the secret of English grammar so as to add polish to your papers, emails, enterprise letters, and extra

English Grammar Demystified teaches the basics of the topic in a simple, step by step strategy that enables you to research at your personal speed. With aid from this e-book, you are going to comprehend the components of speech, learn how to use punctuation competently, grasp verb tenses, spot and stay away from universal grammatical blunders, and enhance your total sentence structures.

Throughout the e-book you could visual display unit your growth via self-tests, and a entire ultimate examination on the finish of the booklet grants immediate suggestions on new language skills.

What do you get if you combine 9 elements of speech, one nice author, and beneficiant dashes of perception, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally pleasing language book.

In his waggish but authoritative publication, Ben Yagoda has controlled to undo the darkish paintings of legions of English lecturers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. now not for the reason that university residence Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious exuberance. learn should you trap an Adjective, Kill It and:

Learn how one can write larger with vintage suggestion from writers comparable to Mark Twain (“If you capture an adjective, kill it”), Stephen King (“I think the line to hell is paved with adverbs”), and Gertrude Stein (“Nouns . . . are thoroughly now not interesting”).

Marvel at how a unmarried notice can shift from adverb (“I did okay”), to adjective (“It was once an ok movie”), to interjection (“Okay! ”), to noun (“I gave my okay”), to verb (“Who okayed this? ”), reckoning on its use.

Laugh whilst Yagoda says he “shall name somebody a dork to the top of his days” who insists on preserving the excellence among shall and should.

Read, and find a booklet whose popular culture references, funny asides, and bracing doses of discernment and customary feel show Yagoda’s distinct feel of the “beauty, the enjoyment, the artistry, and the joys of language. ”

The alternation among the auxiliaries BE and feature, which this assortment examines, is usually mentioned in reference to generative analyses of cut up intransitivity. yet this book's function is to put the phenomenon in a broader context. famous proof within the Romance and Germanic language households are prolonged with facts from lesser studied languages and dialects (Romanian, Paduan), and likewise with experimental and historic facts.

Extra info for A Commonsense Guide to Grammar and Usage, Sixth Edition

Example text

3. There were several pencils on the desk but no pens. 4. The shoes were the right color, but they didn’t fit all that well. 5. The waiter brought the menus, and we ordered some wine. Using Prepositional Phrases to Expand the Basic Sentence Prepositional phrases consist of two components: prepositions and the ob­ jects that follow those prepositions. In the following examples, the preposi­ tions are in boldface and the objects are underlined: after dinner during the intermission beside the front door with a screwdriver near me The objects of prepositions are exactly the same group of words as are the objects of action verbs: nouns, noun phrases, object pronouns (like me), and other nounlike structures.

If you are aware of what the most ­common types of fragments are, you are more likely to spot them. Renamers. These fragments rename or give further information about the last noun in the preceding sentence. Example 1 illustrates this type of fragment. Example 1: fragment Blocking my driveway was a car. 7 A huge SUV. The fragment renames the noun car. Another common type of renamer begins with which: fragment Along the curb, there was a car. my driveway. 7 Which was completely blocking The fragment gives further information about the car.

If the result doesn’t make sense, then the word is not a verb. WILL TIP Let’s apply the Will Tip to these related words: Example: postpone postponement Without using the Will Tip, it is not obvious which one is the verb. However, when we apply the Will Tip, it is perfectly clear: Tip applied: will postpone 7 will postponement The Will Tip shows us that postpone is a verb and that postponement is not. Grammar Test 7 Apply the Will Tip to each of the following word pairs, and underline the verb. indd 11 8/29/11 10:41 AM 12 Grammar without Tears Example: realize Tip applied: will realize realization 7 will realization 1.